Dublin ticket prices for All Blacks hit the heights

BILLY Williams’ cabbage patch has staged some rewarding England matches in its time but never one as handsome as yesterday’s against the All Blacks. Ticket sales topped £10m, the revenue taken to new heights by a huge hike in the cost of the best seats.

For New Zealand’s previous visit in 2014, they had been priced at £89. In four years the figure has more than doubled to £195, the highest figure for any Test match apart from the last World Cup.

A few, it seems, are prepared to pay far more to see the double World Cup holders in Dublin next Saturday. One English-based agency claimed to have sold a seat in Section 104 Row K of the Aviva Stadium for £637. A few others were on offer at prices ranging from £335 to £355.

No country has suffered more from the exponential rise in admission charges than Wales. Their proud boast as purveyors of the cheapest tickets, tailored to suit a larger working-class clientele than anywhere else, has long been crushed beneath the boulders of rampant commercialism.

The blue-collar supporters have been largely priced out of the market, replaced to some extent by the increasing number of ‘corporates’.That has had such a diluting effect on the passion factor that when ex-Lions captain Paul O’Connell pitched up in Cardiff as a pundit last year, he expressed surprise at the lack of atmosphere.